Poetry Princess Fit for a King
Considering how much this country has a history of intolerance toward people of every ethnicity, I am surprised that people even care about this country. Can you really love something that, throughout history, has done everything but love you back? Then I realize that it’s the people like Martin Luther King, Jr. that advocate and campaign for change so persistently that they restore people’s faith in the potential of this country. This was, at least, my reasoning while pondering the extension of King Day, which wasn’t even a national holiday until 22 years ago, to an entire week here at Lehigh.
The Monday of King Week, I reported to the Multicultural Room to attend what I thought was going to be Nikki Giovanni reading a few of her poems before her keynote address on Wednesday. I was quite taken aback, however, when I got there, sat in the circle, and an earmarked copy of one of her poetry books was handed to me. I was encouraged to select a poem that had meaning to me, and read it in front of everyone there. Me? Reading someone else’s poetry? In public? A stenograph of my thought process over the following ten seconds would rival most Tom Clancy novels in length. Would they chase me if I got up and ran away? Flipping through the pages I was hard pressed to find a poem I would be comfortable reading. Did I want to read the poem entitled “Swaziland”? I hear the life expectancy there is 29. I could read the short one called “Rain,” but I don’t especially feel like saying the phrase “God’s sperm” in front of seven complete strangers right now. And, unfortunately, the lady before me had already read Giovanni’s “No Reservations,” so any chance of solace through pretending Anthony Bordain wrote what I was about to read had been vaporized. Appropriately enough, I settled on a poem called “Choices,” which ended up conveying the message that one needs to spin whatever life hands you for the better.
Just when I thought I was done and safe, one of the individuals at the poetry reading questioned me as to why I had chosen that particular poem. Refraining from confessing, “Because it was short,” I replied that, “Honestly, I would have been uncomfortable reading any of the others I saw.” Without so much as a five second pause, someone interpreted my hesitance and made light of the situation, saying something to the effect of, “So you actually see that much of her own identity in the poetry!”
Wow, that was actually it. They say “All the world’s a stage, the men and women merely players,” but Giovanni’s words were too powerful for me to play, or even read, while sitting down. I left the Multicultural Room a tad shaken up, but anxious to hear Giovanni speak later in the week.
On Wednesday night, a brief opening performed by Provost Mohamed El-Aasser introduced Giovanni as a professor of writing and literature at Virginia Tech. Giovanni was, in fact, responsible for speaking at the convocation commemorating the 27 students murdered in the 2007 shooting. She is also the recipient of 25 honorary degrees and holds the keys to more than two dozen cities. Furthermore, she was the first recipient of the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, and has been named Woman of the Year by Ebony magazine and dubbed the “Princess of Black Poetry.”
So if Martin Luther King, Jr. was a firm believer in the power of the spoken word, who better to bring to campus than this poet and civil rights advocate Nikki Giovanni? Many audience members apparently thought the same, as Giovanni received a standing ovation from numerous individuals as she shuffled across the stage to the podium.
Wasting no time, Giovanni began by reiterating that it is the time of year during which many people travel and lose track of exactly what day it is. But this day, she said, everyone knew what day it was- January 21st. Why? Because yesterday was January 20th, Inauguration Day. Adhering to the biography on her webpage, her “outspokenness” was unquestionable; Giovanni easily flowed between current events while dropping opinionated comments such as “Wasn’t it just a pleasure to see Cheney in a wheelchair?” and, regarding Washington, “Let’s try truth, or something like that.”
As she continued to muse on current events, she brought up the fact that although President Barack Obama is seen as the first African-American president, the 29th president, William G Harding, had an African-American grandmother. Her keynote then remained historically oriented, as she recounted the events preceding Rosa Parks’s arrest and the subsequent emergence of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. as a leader in the civil rights movement. Especially thoughtful was her insight into what could possibly have been going through his head as he walked up to address the Montgomery, Alabama crowd for the first time. She recounted that he must have known that every step he took forward was a step away from dying a peaceful death, of old age, in a warm bed at home. And yet he kept walking.
Further into the keynote Giovanni returned to discussing Rosa Parks, and took the opportunity to present her poem entitled, “The Rosa Parks.” Unlike any poem I’ve seen performed, a dance was incorporated in which she “[did] the Rosa Parks” and stepped sideways across the stage while bending her knees as to sit down.
As the lecture concerning the progression of civil rights was coming to an end, Giovanni caught the audience off guard. “I’m a big fan of Deal or No Deal,” she said, and presented a poem she had written for her students at Virginia Tech, who had told her she couldn’t be on the show. “I don’t want to play the game,” she told the audience, “I want to be the game.” Giovanni then proceeded to end the keynote with another personal poem, although much more serious, about how she will always be from Tennessee.
As she was a humorous woman, I am still not sure whether Giovanni was kidding when she claimed at one point during the lecture to have a tattoo on her arm reading “Thug Life,” which she had supposedly gotten to honor the late rapper Tupac. Her spunky personality, as exemplified by the tattoo, had won me over so much that I almost didn’t mind when she referred to the bus driver who had Rosa Parks arrested by the racial slur “cracker.” Regardless, if the theme of this year’s annual Martin Luther King Week celebration was to “remain awake,” then the choice of upbeat, witty Nikki Giovanni as this year’s keynote speaker was indeed an appropriate one.
